At 91, the Great Wole Soyinka aka Olumo Rock Lion, Makes a Wannabe Dictator and World’s Greatest Bouffon to Tremble and Quake.
By Professor Bill F. Ndi,
President of Pan African Writers Association (PAWA)
Professor at Tuskegee University, Tuskegee Alabama USA
At 91, the
Reading about the permanent revocation of Wole Soyinka’s US visa made me laugh because a few months back he was invited for a visa interview which he rejected and ignored. This must have gotten under the thin skin wannabe dictator who believes if it is not his way, it is the highway. But Baba Soyinka was very clear he is not interested in going to live in a country that does not welcome him. And I know he meant it when we had a prior conversation about him choosing to shred his Green Card on Thanksgiving Day 2016. Like one who values Soyinka’s stance on ideas and mentalities, and that against racism, tyranny, injustice, and corruption, I question Donald Trump’s motives. What is it about Soyinka that is giving Trump restlessness? Does Trump know that in every poet is a universal man of peace? I had written the poem below within a day or two of this news regarding Wole Soyinka’s visa revocation and wonder whether it was born of premonition or just poetic bee sting.
The Moral Compass
Another Sunday has come for the idiot’s
Box to buzz with prattles about the head
Whose skull is all hate, empty and ill-bred
Yet, by deplorables hailed as patriots’
Fullscreen image of him for stabbing eyes
Rattling viewers’ brains with sun-shielding clouds
That struggle to fool the wise with the crowds
Behind him thronging and chanting his lies
Of promises of things he would not do
And does and those he’d do and ne’er will do!
For these lots he is the divine response
To their privation from using brute force
To stop beasts-of-burden’s cause on their course
To find, hug, and kiss peace with nonchalance!
The decision by the Trump administration to revoke the U.S. visa of Professor Wole Soyinka is not merely an affront to one man—it is a disgraceful insult to the principles of intellectual freedom, global citizenship, and democratic dissent. As a citizen of the United States, a poet, an academic, a moral leader, an advocate, and a socio-political critic, I write in opposition to thesebase actions that does nothing to dignify the stature of a-once-upon-a-time nation—the United States of America—that was the moral watch dog of democracy but these actions seek to score cheap social media points. Trump and his republican acolytes have slipped The US from democracy to demon crazy. They are in pursuit of any one or any thing that echoes ethics, morality, rigor, accountability, and rectitude and they believe that they can justify such pursuits with flimsy excuses of fighting crime or curbing immigration; all of which do not hold water. To go after Wole Soyinka is to ignore the following poem from Olumo Rock Lion: Poetizing Engineering & Engineering Poetry (PEEP):
The Silver Mane Lion
The grey of his hair defines the matter
Underneath the lion’s crystal lucidness
Pointing its weapons against worldliness
Pushing a tribal few with a filter
Shredded by past glory of once upon
A time blue of the sky of yesteryears
To ignore the Isaràs know no fears
To arm their returned father, not with gun
But with wit and temperament of the lamb
Whose knowledge and faith make of him a sage
Who under different skies stomps many a stage
Led by a shepherd who won’t let His lamb
To back away from any predator
Nor let it bleed to feed a predator!
Wole Soyinka is not just a literary titan; he is a moral compass for the world. His voice has thundered against tyranny, racism, and injustice for over six decades. To silence such a voice by bureaucratic fiat is to declare war on truth itself. And would the world just look on without saying anything? No. Without doing anything? If the world is quick to bash Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky, I would implore you reader to heed the persona of the following poem:
Leaving the King for His Viceroy
Turn not your back on Satan for his vice
For such changes not your itinerary
For both are river and it’s tributary
Not adversaries disputing a device
With which to glorify your pain with grace
But would both lead you to the ocean’s mouth
From which the underworld king’s cottonmouth
Awaits with venom by the fireplace
The one would’ve had you there via the freeway,
The other by the scenic country road
Through which you heard the croaking of the toad
Making your eardrum the perfect highway
For a choice for which you did not bargain
Being in a haste for a change for gain.
For the sake of clarity, this revocation is not about national security. It is not about immigration policy. It is about vengeance—a petty, authoritarian backlash against a man who dared to speak truth to power. Soyinka’s criticism of Donald Trump, including his symbolic act of tearing up his U.S. green card in 2016, was a principled stand against bigotry and demagoguery. That the U.S. government now seeks to punish him for it is a chilling echo of regimes that fear poets more than armies.
This action reeks of cowardice adrift in a quicksand. It is the behavior of a government that cannot tolerate dissent, that confuses criticism with threat, and that mistakes intellectual courage for criminality. Unlike Donald Trump, we must remember, it is on record that he has 34 criminal indictments, and his Epstein cohorts, Soyinka has no criminal record, no history of misconduct—only a legacy of brilliance and bravery. If this is the standard for visa revocation, then the gates of America are closing not to criminals, but to conscience. I wonder if the reader would be surprised that a poet, writing with a pen given to him by Soyinka would write the following poem?
Empires of Yore, Empires of Today
Empires of yore stepped on this quicksand
The same on which the U.S. Empire
Caught, plays fast and loose in a quagmire
And would the world welcome her with a band
And fanfare forgetting her crimes of yore
Picking and lynching of humans they saw
Not as Man but three fifth wood for the saw
And of which to this day they make a lore
And would your heads tilt in the direction
Of brave Genghis Khan who in Xanadu
Did Kubla khan and cared not for mildew
Far removed from anything his passion
Of measureless caverns down to the sea
With gardens of bright sinuous rills bearing tree.
Moreover, the revocation undermines The United States of America’s own cultural and top tier academic institutions. Soyinka has taught at Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Emory. He has lectured for PEN America and stood as a beacon for free expression. Could Soyinka’s brilliance and excellence at America’s stellar institutions that Trump hates and likes to berate explain his decision to fall so low? Could it also be his intense jealousy against the Nobel Laureate, as he,Trump failed to secure the same Prize in the peace category, that would have pushed him to try to prove a point that he can push around a Nobel winner? Or again, could it be his personal insecurities—what psychologist call paranoia—that is the culprit for his action? I know words like narcissism have been thrown around in relation to Trump but that is left to his doctors to make such determination. However, for Trump to ban Soyinka is to betray the very values that the abovementioned distinguished institutions uphold. And I write especially as one to whom Soyinka himself handed over a pen and with which pen I wrote the following poem.
A Pen from the Master
My pen I dreamt was mightier than the sword
And our gods and creative companions
Ordained I must from the master millions
Of drop from his pen to me strike the chord
And chime a tune that would keep oppressors
Earth quaking at the sight of the trigger
Pulled on this birthday gift from the master
With proofs poetic force is our recourse
For warring with our hearts for the oppressed
Whose victory we not only dream but talk
Into existence of minding against hawks
Our chicks to whom the baton must be ’pressed
As freedom fight is not in one battle won;
And must continue till conquest is borne.
Curled from Olumo Rock Lion: Poetizing Engineering, Engineering Poetry (PEEP) 2025.
In revoking Soyinka’s visa, the Trump administration has not protected The United States of America—it has diminished it. It has told the world that the U.S. is no longer a sanctuary for ideas, but a fortress against them. It has become Aesop’s proverbial corrupt society wherein the big criminals are promoted into high office, and the petty criminals are thrown to languish in jail. The United States of America under Trump has chosen fear over freedom, and retaliation over respect. It is a chaotic situation that leaves a poet in search of a language other than a classical language to adequately address such moral decay as in the poem here below:
On Writing and the Tongue’s Divide
I write not my verse in Spanish because
It is too distilled a tongue for this cause
Far removed from anything romantic
With nothing to do with acrobatic
A restive sport that flips eye sores inside
Out and brings to bear a sordid divide
Whose horrendous stride leaves nothing but scars
That plague the young whose dreams flirt with the stars
That shoot westward and shine light on the gulf
Of darkness threatening to the world engulf
And make the same a pit of its image
Garbed in the cloak of blind love for knowledge
Which is but a noose for a stranglehold
And one against which no fool should be sold.
The last two lines of the above poem label everything done by the chaotic administration as a noose for a stranglehold against which no fool should be sold. This is to say that Wole Soyinka’s legacy will not be erased by a revoked US visa. Soyinka’s words will cross borders that no consulate can close. His ideas will inspire generations long after the Trump administration has slipped into oblivion and is forgotten. The poem below is an example of Soyinka’s (The Lion’s)idea that is inspiring as it will continue to inspire. Curled from Olumo Rock Lion: Poetizing Engineering & Engineering Poetry (PEEP) 2025
The Lion’s Badge
A warrior whose eyes and heart have not quit
The game for a second in ninety good years
Donning his badge of courage not of fears
And going on to demand tyrants quit
Driving his razor-sharp words through their grip
From the simulacrum of sugar sweet
Independence well buried in the street
Where with dependence the narratives flip.
The bard stands to be the storyteller
Of the lion whose eyes on preys whet his pen
For tales of scams from inside despots’ den
Of the conning hyenas whose laugh splatter
To trample on cubs and muse the great pride,
Their champ would allow corruption to slide.
Finally, to those who still believe in liberty, let this be a call to vigilance. Because when a government begins to silence its critics, it is not the critics who are in danger—it is democracy itself, it is the society and the very essence of humanity. Soyinka, the Olumo Rock Lion whose roar gladdens, shall forever gladden.
Roar that Gladdens
I see a zillion hearts your roar gladdens.
They span years of your productivity
Kindling the warmth that your creativity
Breathes, spitting fire on ravens like dragons.
The hand of the clock’s turned your golden mane
Silvery and shiny with a hope-bringing
Lining to the oppressed being served suffering
By the ruthless and callous who sustain
Abject weapons and bedrock of misery
Against which your pillar-strong resistance
Has mocked and still does with uncanny stance
With which art you have made no mystery
The tenor of which makes quake the wicked
Who desires a world plagued with ricket.
